I have briefly reviewed the revised Baptist General Association of Virginia 2013 proposed budget: good for the budget committee and good for BGAV leadership. Thank you for hearing the wails and cries of disappointment. And thanks for Woman’s Missionary Union of Virginia choosing to share the pain. Now, this makes you proud to be a Virginia Baptist!
Ron Crawford |
I know this is going to make some of my readers cringe, but I have a question: “Why put us all through this agony?” If the budget committee had come forward with the revised budget first, there wouldn’t have been a Baptist squabble. Why put the BGAV family through this torture? And, “Ron, you should trust the process” is not an adequate answer. It is not an adequate answer when a budget committee will come out with a proposal to cut a partner 50 percent without warning.
The system is either broken or in need of significant repair.
Let me play the “Jim White” card. If the BGAV wants to reduce Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond over the next five years I am good with that. I don’t like it, but I can deal with it. Is it asking too much for us to have a respectful conversation and plan together to reach a mutually agreeable timetable for that to happen, and should BGAV trustee representation on partner boards change as BGAV dollars decline? Or are BTSR and other partners simply at the mercy of whomever is on the budget committee in any particular year? Why is the budget process not looking at multiple years and establishing yearly goals for how the partner relationships (funding) will change? Why can’t partners and BGAV leaders sit together and plan out a mutual future?
Let me play the donor card. A major donor of BTSR read the news BTSR was to be cut 50 percent. She quickly tweeted Tim Heilman (vice president for advancement) in a bit of a panic. She wanted to know why Virginia Baptists were radically cutting the seminary. All we could say was, “We have no clue. We are as surprised as you.”
It is really hard to recover from this kind of impression in a donor’s mind. While we are busy with damage control, an unfortunate seed has been planted in the back of a donor’s mind. The budget committee’s original recommendation has made BTSR’s life more difficult and caused a boatload of unnecessary pain. If the BGAV is intent on reducing funding to BTSR over the coming years can we do it in a way that does not wreck our efforts to secure the seminary’s future?
I am going to play the centralization card again. Sorry to be counter-cultural. Centralizing Virginia Baptist efforts in a social context bent on decentralization is a mistake. The Virginia Baptist mission portfolio is very heavily concentrated in one “stock.” This is a really bad idea.
Centralization in Baptist life began (in a major way) in the early 20th century. In the Cooperative Program (1925) Baptists decided to adopt the model of the Industrial Age (assembly line) to grow denominational life. Following an Industrial Age philosophy in the Information Age will lead to death for any church or organization. In the 2013 proposed budget Virginia Baptists are doubling-down on centralization. This is a bad idea.
Finally, I want to return to the beginning. How the BGAV treats partners leaves much to be desired. Let me illustrate my point. In the revised budget the John Leland Center for Theological Studies is move from the “stateside” to the “national side” of the budget. This is a fundamental philosophical change in the BGAV-Leland relationship. Did this fundamental philosophical change come as the result of a careful and thoughtful process over six months, or did it just happen as a committee was trying to make numbers work in a particular budget? We can do better than this.
Ron Crawford ([email protected]) is president of Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond.